Music and people hold my life together. I describe experiences, discoveries and insights, often connected with music and with teaching and playing piano. The blog is a way to stay in touch with friends, and may also be food for thought for anyone else, especially people connected with music and the piano/
Musik und Menschen halten mein Leben zusammen. Ich beschreibe Erfahrungen, Entdeckungen und Einsichten, oft in Zusammenhang mit dem Klavierspiel und dem Klavierunterricht.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

The
talk at the Rubin Museum in NYC that I’ve attended is over at 8:30 pm. Chances to
catch the 8:55 bus to New Jersey are slim, and it can’t be more than a 15
minute- walk over to the Goethe Institute, just one block East of Union Square.
In the latest issue of their newsletter they announced an unusual project: As a part of the Time:Spans festival of contemporary music, pianist Marino Formenti is going to play the
piano from 10am to 10 pm in the library during the coming two weeks. He’s also going to live in the space.

Description of the project

“Nowhere is a non-place in the middle of
the city,” describes the announcement. “Marino Formenti performs, eats, sleeps
and lives… all in the same space – a metaphorical, silent, musical ‘glass
house’ that is also surrounded by and on view to the daily life of the city. In
a performance about music, time and togetherness, Formenti questions any and
all divisions between performance and life. Days become music. We invite you to
come and stay, leave and come back, listen or ignore the pianist, sleep, read,
write, draw, lie down – to experience music, time and togetherness in another
way. “

The pianist having dinner (photo from live-stream)

Sounds
slightly off the wall, but intriguing at the same time. I just hope it’s more
than the ego-trip of an artist trying to draw attention to himself.

When I
reach the Goethe Institute, the windows of the library are dark. I wonder if
I’ve come to the right place. But there is light in the back of the room, and a
grand piano, two or three people inside. The familiar rows of chairs they line
up for movie screenings are gone. Instead, futons and pillows are laid out on
the floor. Cautiously I lean against the glass door, still not sure if it’s
open.

Interior of the Library

It gives,
and I enter a space filled with sound. I recognize Bach’s Prelude in a-minor
from WTC II, performed with vigor and determination. I have a different feeling
of the piece, but it doesn’t matter. This is not about interpretation, right
and wrong, better or worse. This is not about the artist, who disappears behind
the piano, barely visible for the audience. This is about the music itself, and
that allows for more than one way of understanding.

Formenti at the piano

I
settle down on a futon by the wall and take in the space. The floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves on the opposite wall have disappeared behind white curtains. The
smaller ones are hidden under grey slipcovers, reminding of the barricades that
have gone up along sidewalks all over the city – to prevent maniacs from
driving their vehicles into crowds of pedestrians; at least that’s what a
friend told me.

Covered Bookcases

The
walls are bare, and so is the table, where the artist takes his meals. An image
appears in my mind, a memory, of my apartment in Cologne, as it emptied out
before my relocation to the United States in December 2001. This is the final
stage. The moving boxes are gone already. The piano is the last thing that
remains in the empty living room. The music is the one thing I know in the
uncertain future that awaits me on the other side of the ocean. A wave of
emotion washes over me.

After
he has played a few pieces, Formenti gets up, takes a piece of chalk from the
table and writes the repertoire he just played on the wall, along with the time
when he played it. To leave a trace of what is gone, I wonder. Music is time
made audible, someone once said. You can’t hold on to sound the way you can
hold on to an image. The moment it goes out into the world it begins to die – a
likeness of our own path.

List of pieces

The
artist returns to the piano, for another set of Bach, Frescobaldi, Cage,
Couperin, Froberger, Feldman, Nirvana and others, also some music of his own.
Most of the pieces are quiet, evenly paced, of a transparent character that gives
room for the individual sound to unfold. It’s sensitive, exquisite playing and
the artist fades into the background behind its beauty.

Blending the inside and the outside world

It’s music
they should play in the doctor’s office, in the hospital, in the emergency room. Exchange the omnipresence
of TV screens for the presence of music. The presence of music and the absence
of words. So may loud words, angry words, full of hatred and hostility in these
troubled times.

Street views during the day (photos from live stream)

You’re
not supposed to address the artist. Formenti himself will not speak during the
entire two-week performance period of “Nowhere.”

The
9:55 bus leaves the city without me. There’s another one in an hour. The music
ends at 10. Formenti rushes outside and lights a cigarette. As I walk past, I
whisper a quiet “thank you” in his direction.

I click
on the live-stream on my computer after getting home. Formenti is practicing….

Nowhere continues
at the Goethe Institute New York, 30 Irving Place from 10 am to 10 pm every day
until August 28th. If you’re in the city, treat yourself and stop
by. You can also follow the live-streaming 24/7 at